If Not for One More Day
by Moonfawn
Summary: A story about what would happen if Cynthia Velasquez came back to life for one day as a ghost. Where will she go, and who will she visit?
1. A Taste of Oblivion

**If Not for One More Day**

**Chapter 1: A Taste of Oblivion**

Cynthia Velasquez had a bad night.

Unable to find any parties that night, she wandered alone into the South Ashfield Station subway. She had gone there countless times, taking it for granted. But that night, there was something different about it. She felt like she was in a dream.

Soon, she would meet a sort of cute guy on the subway. He seemed confused, misplaced, and awkward. She promised him a "special favor" in return for helping her find a way out. She wasn't sure if he understood what she'd meant, but he was nice enough to try to help her. He even waited for her to come back while she tried to cope with a sudden bout of nausea in the restroom.

But she wouldn't come back.

Something happened and they got separated, but she didn't stay alone for very long. A mysterious man began to stalk her. She recognized him as a young homeless man whom she rejected years ago. They had met on the subway, and although she was nice to him at first, once he revealed that he had known of her for a decade without actually talking to her, she thought him a stalker, and derided him as "disgusting" before quickly leaving the subway.

She attempted to escape the man, but he cornered and killed her in one of the subway cars. He penetrated her flesh over and over again with a knife until he was apparently satisfied. Then, he took special care to etch a five digit number into her left breast: "16121".

The slightly cute, awkward guy arrived too late to stop the assailant. There was blood all over her and the car, but he still cradled her in his arms and attempted to comfort her by telling her it was all a dream.

_All a dream..._

Unbeknownst to them, she was the first in a series of victims in the "Walter Sullivan Case Round Two", where ritualistic murders in the style of a criminal who killed himself years before were committed. Unbeknownst to them, there would be three more victims.

Unbeknownst to them, there were supposed to be two more.

Cynthia Velasquez had a bad night once, and it killed her.

Her final thoughts would be mixed between two men: one who was nice enough to try to help a complete stranger like her, and another who stalked and murdered her with an inscrutable expression on his face. It was like he was separated from reality, floating above it but not really connected to it.

If that even _was_ reality...

Reality. Right. No matter what the nice man told her, there was no denying the fact that that was her last fragment of reality, and she would never have another again.

Or would she?


	2. A Touch of Death

**Chapter 2: A Touch of Death**

Cynthia Velasquez suddenly woke up after what felt like a lifetime. Her gasp for air was cut off by a sudden surge of blood that demanded a release out of her throat. At least, she _hoped_ it was blood, as it choked its way out of her.

She cradled her face with a shaking hand as she began to cry from shock, and curled up on a bench somewhere. She saw that she was still wearing the outfit from that mostly terrible night, but she was cleaned up. No more blood, no more stab wounds. How? Why?

She sat on the bench, as her whole body shook. Her mind tried to grasp its surroundings. It was a town, during the daytime. Foggy. What she could see was shades of gray everywhere.

A few minutes later, her shaking subsided a little, and she crossed the street to a garage. A middle-aged trucker was walking around red fuel truck that was parked inside of it.

She meekly approached him. "Um...? Mister? Hello?"

He didn't notice her.

She tried asking a little more forcefully. "Hello? Mister?"

He failed to notice her again, as he was examining the truck.

Desperate, Cynthia grabbed his arm and begged, "Please!"

Suddenly, he gasped and turned around to see who had grabbed him. But he just looked on in confusion for a few seconds.

"...Must be gettin' jumpy in my old age," he dismissed, before returning to his duties.

Cynthia was hurt. In her time of need, how could he not notice her? Men rarely didn't, when she was alive.

When she was alive...

_Oh, no..._

A wave of tearfulness visited upon her, before she was filled with dread at a sudden realization in regards to her condition. What if...

She bolted from the garage to the nearest public bathroom. She went into the restroom appropriate for her gender, although it hardly mattered if her suspicion was correct.

Her reflection in the mirror seemed to pass muster. At the very least, she wasn't a vampire. She could feel her own hand on her face, but why was she so cold? There wasn't a _feeling_ of being a real, live human inside or about her.

She decided she would have to do something drastic.

Wandering further from the garage, she found the South Ashfield Funeral Parlor, at least determining where she was. She went inside and found a pen attached to a chain on a table in the reception. Looking around to see if she would have an audience first, she yanked the pen out of its rest and began to scribble all over the newspapers and magazines spread across the table.

A middle-aged woman sitting in one of the chairs at the table saw something out of the corner of her eye, and looked up from her magazine. Her eyes grew wide, and she slowly edged her way out of the chair, away from the table, and out of the parlor.

Cynthia watched her get up and leave. What she didn't want to be confirmed, was, and she heaved a sigh as she slowly hung her head back in distress.

A ghost.

She had no idea what to do with that. A flurry of "what ifs?" entered her mind.

_What if I stay this way? What if I don't "pass on"? What if there's no way to "properly" die? Is this because of how I died? What should I do...?_

For some reason, she suddenly thought of the man who had been nice to her that night, Henry. She didn't think he could give her any answers, but she wanted to see him. But where did he even live?

She had to look him up in the phonebook at a telephone booth. To her dismay, she had neglected to find a quarter for the call. She realized that, in her condition, she could take whatever she wanted, but that felt wrong. Indeed, if she were to pass on, stealing wouldn't get her to a better place.

To get a quarter, she needed to take a pen from an office – hey, they were free anyway – and a stray piece of paper. Then, she left a note for a slightly distracted man waiting for the bus.

The note read, "_Please help – I need a quarter for the phone to call a ride home_". The man paused before digging in his pocket for some change. He looked around for someone to with whom to leave it, but Cynthia took it while he was looking in the opposite direction. Cynthia then hastily scribbled a thank-you note and left it next to the man.

Change in tow, Cynthia double-checked Henry Townshend's number in the phonebook and made her call.

_Beep... Beep... Beep..._

She grew worried with the passing of the tones. What if he wasn't home? What if _that man_ caught up to him, and he never got to leave the subway that night, either?

A breath later, someone on the other side of the line picked up. "_Hello?_"

The voice on the other end was definitely Henry's. He sounded rather tired.

"H... Henry?" she asked. "Is it you?"


	3. The Sound of Silence

**Chapter 3: The Sound of Silence**

"_Hello?_" Henry asked again, a little more willfully. "_Who is this?_"

"Henry... it's... me, Cynthia..." she stated, with some apprehension. What if he couldn't hear her?

On Henry's end, he heard a female voice laden with static.

"Don't you remember me?" she asked. "From the subway?..."

_What am I doing?_ _I'm a dead girl trying to talk to the living_, she suddenly stopped to wonder.

Several seconds passed before Henry said, "_It can't be..._"

"Henry... please don't hang up. I know what this sounds like... but it's me. I don't know why or how, but... I'm back. But it's not normal... I know that much. Just please don't give up on me... Where do you live?"

There was a long silence.

"_...South Ashfield Heights..._ _Room 302._"

Cynthia nearly wept, as she wrote the name and number of the apartment onto her left wrist. "Henry... I want to come see you."

Henry opened his mouth, but didn't know what to say.

"I'll come see you, okay?"

"..._Okay_."

"Thank you."

Cynthia hung up the phone and looked at her wrist again before setting off for the apartment.

**-=X=-**

Henry sat in his bedroom and stared at the phone, suspicious of the call he'd just received. Could it be that Cynthia really came back? She didn't seem to know that she already came back once before, as a terrifying ghost that menaced him and Eileen Galvin, intended as the second-to-last of Walter Sullivan's victims. What sort of trauma would she have to go through to come back not once, but twice? Would she be the same as she was the last time? Her being able to talk was a good sign, but Henry still took precautions. He took a protective amulet (that, unbeknownst to him, was carved with the image of the Order's St. Heather, the Mother of God and God herself as a baby) and a stun gun out of the trunk in his living room and placed them on the large table in front of his television.

He didn't know what would be coming to see him, and he had to protect himself. He didn't struggle to survive through many parallel worlds just so he could be killed – or worse – by a ghost in his apartment after all.

Suddenly, in the middle of his planning, he had a thought. He left his apartment and knocked on the door of Room 303, Eileen Galvin's apartment.

Eileen, who had just recently gotten out of the hospital from wounds that Walter inflicted on her in his attempt on her young life, peeked out from behind the chain on the ajar door. "Oh, Henry, it's you. What's up?"

He looked at her apologetically. "Hi, Eileen. Uh... Have you received any weird calls lately?"

"Calls?" Eileen scratched her face. "No, why?"

"I just got a weird call. Can I come in?" he asked sheepishly.

Eileen let him inside, and they sat on her couch. Henry could see that Eileen was starting to pack some of her belongings away to prepare for moving out of South Ashfield Heights.

"What happened?" Eileen asked, a little tense.

Henry paused to consider how to answer her. "Remember when we were in the Otherworlds, and there were... ghosts?"

Eileen crossed her arms, and began to rub her right arm. "Yes?" she answered quietly.

"Well... I just got a call from one. B-But she sounded normal, like she was before she... died."

Eileen said nothing, and looked at the floor. "I..."

"She was Cynthia... I met her before Walter... killed her."

Eileen scratched the side of her head. "So... what?"

"She wants to meet me... In my apartment. So, just in case... be on your guard, okay?"

"...Okay. Thank you, Henry."

**-=X=-**

Along the way to South Ashfield Heights, night had fallen, and it began to rain. Somehow, Cynthia could feel it. She wished she had taken the bus - she wouldn't have even had to pay that time.

As she approached the building, she felt a strange sense of importance from it, as if it were bigger than it actually was. She could tell that some strange things had happened there.

"Room 302," she reminded herself, as she opened the door to the foyer. She took the stairs to the third floor, and approached Room 302's front door. But...

"Oh, no," she said, as she was confronted by heavy chains thrown across the door.


	4. A Sight for Sore Eyes

**Chapter 4: A Sight for Sore Eyes**

"Oh, no," Cynthia repeated, as she knocked on the door to Room 302.

Inside of Room 302, the signal on Henry's idle television fell into static.

"What the hell?" Henry asked. Somewhat suspiciously, he sat up from the couch and looked through the door's peephole.

"Ah!" He yelped and jumped back from the door, as he saw the wild-haired, floating ghost form that Cynthia took after she was murdered. He scrambled over to the table and grabbed the stun gun and Saint Medallion off of it.

Cynthia kept knocking on the door. "Henry? Are – are you in there? Please, don't leave me out here..."

The television began to ring intensely at an incredibly high pitch, before shutting off completely. Suddenly, the lights in the room went dark.

The whole building seemed to go silent. The only noise that could be heard was the rain falling outside.

Henry stifled the sense of panic flooding over him, and placed the Saint Medallion around his neck. He slowly leaned over to peek through the peephole again...

That time, he saw someone sitting on the floor across the hall, face resting on their knees. She looked up, and he saw that she was indeed Cynthia as he knew her before Walter Sullivan's attack. He gasped and undid the hasp and locks on the door as quickly as he could.

"Cynthia?!" he exclaimed.

"Henry..." As Cynthia slowly stood up, the ceiling lights in the corridor flickered. Henry stepped aside as she dazedly walked into Room 302.

"Cynthia, is it really you?" Henry asked. Before she could answer, the beautiful Latina fell over, forcing Henry to catch her.

Holding her, he sat on his knees as he tried to make sense of the situation. "Are you okay? What's going on?"

Cynthia opened her eyes and looked up at the young man, with his attractively disheveled brown hair and scruffy five o'clock shadow. Looking at him then, she wondered if he could see himself as she saw him. She put her hand on his cheek, just like she did down in the subway that night. "It's going to be fine now."

"Henry..." she began, "Do you think I was a good person?"

Henry was blindsided by the question. How could he possibly say, given how little he knew her?

"Cynthia, I... don't think you were a bad person," he answered tentatively. "You didn't deserve what happened to you."

_No one does_, he added in private.

Cynthia chuckled slightly. "I see. I probably made it difficult sometimes, for other people."

Her expression hardened. "Henry, will you promise me one thing? Please, don't ever forget me. After everything else that's happened, I couldn't bear..."

Henry felt put-upon, given how painfully shy and introverted he was. But he tried. "Cynthia, I could never forget you."

Relief washed over the young Latina. She felt that she could rely on him for that. But... "I feel like I've asked you to do a hard thing, and I feel like I've done something horrible to you."

"No, Cynthia... it's okay," Henry replied sadly. He figured that she must have been referring to her "past life" as a ghost that haunted and stalked him and Eileen Galvin in the other world. But he was unsure if keeping that from her was the right thing to do, if she did not remember it herself.

Cynthia sighed. "Henry, I'm... going to miss you. Take care of yourself, okay?"

Henry's brow furrowed. "What is going to happen now?"

"I don't know." _But I hope it will be peaceful_, she thought to herself.

Henry laid her down on the floor and sat back against the wall, which was not terribly comfortable, but he felt the need to sit. "Cynthia, can I ask you something?"

She looked over at him. "Yes."

"Are you – mad at me? For..."

"No," she said quickly. "I have no reason to be..."

"Oh." Henry leaned over and clasped his hands, before getting an idea. "Cynthia, would you be willing... to take a picture with me?"

She looked quizzically at him, before understanding what his request meant. The sexpot took it as a sign that she still looked good, even as a ghost, which made her smile wryly. She still had "it", even if for just one more day.

"Sure, I'd love to."

**The end****.**

_Afterword:_ I worked on this fic for a couple of months before deciding how to end it. Originally, the ending was more vague and less conclusive. Then, it was really overwritten.

This was my attempt to give Cynthia a happy ending, but I wasn't totally satisfied with the result. I would like to know what readers did and didn't like in this fic.


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